Perceive
by matrixaffiliate
Summary: Vic doesn't remember everything about growing up with Teddy, but she does remember when everything changed. A companion piece to Envisage, Vic's side of that story. Prompted by the wonderful ThisIsMegz and her fabulous ideas! A Teddy/Victoire fluff story. One-shot. Rated T. Everything belongs to JKR.


**Perceive**

 **A/N: A companion piece to Envisage, Vic's side of that story. I wrote this three times before I was finally happy with it. Prompted by the wonderful ThisIsMegz and her fabulous ideas! Hope you all enjoy! A Teddy/Victoire fluff story. One-shot. Rated T. Everything belongs to JKR.**

Vic couldn't put a specific memory to when she met Teddy. As far as she was concerned, Teddy had always been there. He was at almost every family gathering, he spent a good half of vacation with the Potter's during the summers, and he knew as much if not more about the Potter/Weasley families than anyone. She couldn't even remember the first time Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry had taken her and Teddy for ice cream, something that happened once a month, sometimes more, for as long as she could remember. Teddy once told her that it was originally just **his** outing with Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry until he asked to include her. Vic is pretty sure that's when they became best friends.

But for all the things Vic can't remember, she most certainly **can** remember the exact moment she realized that her feelings for Teddy were starting to change. It wasn't a huge change, but it was definitely a change. It came at the first ice cream outing without Teddy. Ginny and Harry had made it a special one, leaving her cousins with Grandma Andromeda so it was just the three of them. She'd been a little sad that Teddy was off to Hogwarts before her, but she was sure things would be ok; they were best friends after all.

However, as she slid into the booth at Fortescue's Vic suddenly felt a hole inside her. It wasn't an Earth-shattering realization, just a void. It must have shown on her face because Ginny reached a hand across the table and squeezed hers, a comforting smile on her face. What was all the more confusing was that the hole was ever-present for the next few months. It was like everything was only half as good as it could have been - until Teddy fell out of the fire grate at Grandma Weasley's Christmas party, having returned for the holiday two days before. Upon seeing him, Vic suddenly felt the hole within her vanish and she felt whole again for the first time since he left. She'd wrapped him in a hug and made Teddy tell her all about Hogwarts. Their time ended far too soon for their liking before he was off on the train again, and just like that, the empty feeling was back.

It was confusing, and the hole slowly began to consume Vic's thoughts. Why did she feel partially empty while Teddy was away at school? The question surfaced again at a family dinner her parents were hosting on a cold winter evening. She sat pondering her predicament by the garden window, watching the winter sea crash white foam on to the sand. Vic had been sitting there most of the evening when Aunt Ginny came and sat next to her, a comforting hand on her arm.

"Deep thoughts?"

Vic started, before nodding sadly, "I'm really confused about something, Aunt Ginny, and I don't know what to make of it."

Ginny nodded seriously, "Would you like to talk through it with me? Maybe I can help you make sense of it."

Vic paused, this problem, while it was starting to be boarder line infuriating, also felt very private for some strange reason, she didn't even feel comfortable talking to her mum about it. But even as she hesitated, Vic started to talk - Aunt Ginny had that effect on most everyone - "Well, it started at the ice cream parlor after Teddy went to Hogwarts. When we sat down, I felt sort of a, well a hole inside. And that hole didn't go away. It was just always there. But then Teddy came back for Christmas hols and when I saw him again the hole went away."

"And when he went back to school, the hole came back?" Aunt Ginny finished.

Vic nodded, her face contorted in confusion.

Aunt Ginny smiled and took Vic's hands in hers. "It seems confusing now, but I can give you a simple answer. You've never had any of your friends or family leave for really long periods of time before; you see your mum's family every other month and the rest of us are around at least that often. Teddy leaving for Hogwarts is the longest you've been away from anyone important to you. Teddy's your best friend too, so being away from him is harder than if it were just a good friend. It's your heart telling you that Teddy is very important to you."

Vic mulled over Aunt Ginny's words for a moment as she thought them through. "So I'll have a hole for everyone when I go to Hogwarts?" She asked a little worried. Vic didn't care for the feeling of one hole, one for every member of her family seemed like an awful thing.

Aunt Ginny chuckled, "Maybe, but maybe not. Your heart may show you that your family is important to you in different ways."

"I hope so, I don't like having one hole inside for Teddy, having twenty some holes would be awful!"

Aunt Ginny laughed and wrapped Vic in a hug, "That it would, love. Let's not worry about it too much though. And you can always talk to me about these things you know, or when you go off to school you can write to me about it."

Vic smiled as she hugged her aunt back, "Thanks, Aunt Ginny; I'll remember that."

The hole wasn't so bad after that talk with Aunt Ginny. Vic found it easier to live with now that she knew what it was and what it meant.

When Vic's turn to go to Hogwarts rolled around she was excited to not have the "Teddy hole" anymore. But Teddy had lads to run with and while the Teddy hole went away, Aunt Ginny's letters helped Vic to understand that the hole had been replaced with what Vic had dubbed the "Teddy ache." Vic did take Aunt Ginny's advice though and made friends; those new friends helped her not feel that ache too keenly when Teddy was too busy with his lads for her.

Aunt Ginny helped Vic when she found out she liked Teddy too. Vic had turned down a hall to find Teddy kissing a Hufflepuff girl. The range of emotions that hit her was hard and fast and before she knew what she was doing, Vic's legs had carried her to Uncle Neville's office, tears streaming down her face. Uncle Neville was very close to the Potter's, he and Aunt Hannah we're always visiting with their kids. Vic found she had grown close to the Longbottom's as she was usually whom Teddy asked to have over whenever the Potter's did something that he and the Longbottom's were included in. Once Vic was at Hogwarts, he was the closest thing to an adult family member at the school that she had. Uncle Neville had been a sweetheart, wrapping her in a hug and letting her sit with him until she'd calmed down. When she could finally speak in coherent sentences and not the strangled mumbles of "Teddy" and "kissing her", Vic was beyond embarrassed.

"I, I'm so sorry Uncle Neville. I'll let you get back to your evening, I'm so sorry." She stammered standing to leave.

"Oh, Victoire, you're fine, now sit down. I bet you'd like to talk to your Aunt Ginny? She mentioned this might happen in the next year or two." Uncle Neville smiled at the blush that filled Vic's face. But Vic did manage a nod before turning away, too embarrassed to say anything.

"I'll just send her a Patronus, and we'll see what she can do."

Aunt Ginny's horse came back in reply telling them to hang tight, and a few short moments later she walked through Uncle Neville's office fire grate.

"Thanks, Neville," Aunt Ginny wrapped him in a hug.

"I'll leave you to it," he nodded before heading out the door.

"Oh, Aunt Ginny!" Vic cried as Ginny wrapped her in a hug, "I, I saw Teddy kissing, kissing some Hufflepuff girl!"

Aunt Ginny held her until the tears subsided again before speaking, "And why does that upset you?"

Vic looked at her in shock, "What?"

"Why are you upset that Teddy is kissing a Hufflepuff girl?"

Vic felt her heartbeat quicken, her mouth went dry, and her mind raced as she realized what Aunt Ginny was pushing her to see. "Oh no! I like him...Aunt Ginny, what am I going to do? I can't like him, he's my best friend!"

Aunt Ginny laughed, "Well first and foremost, we don't get to pick whom we're attracted to, and second you'll just need to act the same around him for now. You came to the realization long before Ted, so, unfortunately, you'll need to be the one who waits. It's a tough road, but I made it through all right, though your Uncle Harry was a tosser about it for a while."

Vic still felt in shock, "Wait, do you think he likes me?"

"Oh my dear the two of you were more or less made for each other, but you're miles ahead of Teddy right now. So don't change how you normally act around Teddy and don't be afraid to date if a different guy asks, that's part of what got Uncle Harry to finally figure out his feelings for me." Then Aunt Ginny glanced at her watch, "I need to get back, Hannah has my three with hers right now so we could have this chat. I'll write to you tonight after I get your cousins to bed and we can keep writing about it whenever you need."

"But Aunt Ginny, how can I act normal when everything has changed?" Vic panicked as Ginny stood. Ginny smiled down at her.

"Well, **this** is your new normal. But for now think back on how you usually interact with Teddy and do exactly that in the most natural way, don't over think it, be yourself and do exactly what you were doing before. Just let the friendship between you two lead the way, and whenever possible don't be around him when he had his current fling with him. You can do this Vic, and if you give it enough time, he'll come to see you the same way." Ginny kissed Vic's cheek and then disappeared into the green flames.

Vic spent a couple of years doing everything Aunt Ginny had said, and if she was being honest, she'd tell you they were the longest to years of her life. She even let Teddy talk her into breaking up with Jeff Parsons, one of the sweetest, most polite boys she'd ever met, only to have Teddy start dating a Ravenclaw girl named Jessica just before Christmas. Vic was almost glad Teddy was ahead of her in school and in a different house so that she didn't have classes with him nor did she have to eat at the same table as him. But Teddy knew the Gryffindor password and spent a lot of time in the common room with her and her cousins. It was almost maddening. She wanted to spend every minute with this damned boy but just not as his childhood best friend, as something much more than simply friends.

It was after final exams when Vic overhead that Jessica had ended things with Ted. She'd tried to find him and make sure he was all right - the majority of her intentions honorable, thank you very much - but Ted turned avoiding her into an art form. He holed up in the Hufflepuff dorms and didn't come to meals. Vic went to the elves to see if he'd at least been raiding the kitchens, and they'd assured her he had which brought her a small bit of relief. When he stayed in the Prefect's carriage the entire ride home though, Vic really started to worry. She wrote Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry on the train asking that they check up with him and let her know if he was all right. The Teddy ache was threatening to become the Teddy hole again, and Vic could not bear that possibility.

Vic did her best to not overreact about the situation, but it wasn't until a couple weeks later when Grandma Andromeda's Patronus showed up asking if Teddy could floo over that Vic felt like she could breathe again. She definitely wanted to be more than just Teddy's best friend, but the last couple weeks of not seeing Teddy at all had been enough for her to decide that best friend was way better than nothing at all.

But later, when she's lying on her beach towel soaking wet, her hair a tangled mess, and Ted tells her he loves her, Vic feels like time has stopped and her heart has exploded, because she never thought this dream would come true and she thinks it finally has. And when his lips find hers as she tells him she loves him too, her mind bursts with fireworks and when his hand finds her face she knows that she never wants anyone else to touch her like this because everything she's ever wanted has just happened and she's never letting go.


End file.
